Dewar campaign release: Mulcair leads in the NDP Leadership Race

It may seem odd for one candidate to release a poll that shows that candidate to be trailing in a particular political race. But I think the Paul Dewar Campaign wanted to show a couple of things by releasing poll data which shows Dewar to be in third spot when it comes first-place spot on the preferential ballots of NDP voters though he is in first spot when it comes to second-choice on that preferential ballot.

First: His poll shows Brian Topp whom the Parliamentary Press Gallery (though not me, I will claim) quickly anointed as a front-runner when this race got going is definitely not a front-runner.

Second: As you will see in the release below from the Dewar campaign, Dewar believes these numbers support the thesis that the NDP leadership campaign has become a three-person race between him, Peggy Nash, and Thomas Mulcair. Maybe.

In any event, here’s the release from the Dewar campaign:

OTTAWA – Today the Paul Dewar Campaign is releasing the results of a large Interactive Voice Response (IVR) poll of 6,373 NDP members from every region of Canada. The poll, conducted from February 8-9th asked respondents to select their first and second choice for leader of the NDP. Respondents were provided with a list of all the candidates to choose from.

Using the most up to date NDP membership list (February 2nd, 2012) 56,522 NDP members were called and a total of 6,373 NDP members responded, with participation from every province and territory. The poll has a margin of error of 1.19% 19 times out of 20.

The results of the poll have been weighted to accurately reflect the current (February 2nd) NDP membership numbers in every province and territory.

“These results, representing a very large sample of NDP members in every region of Canada, clearly show a number of important factors for this leadership race,” said Dan Mackenzie, Campaign Manager for the Paul Dewar Campaign. “They show that nobody will win on the first ballot, that second ballot support is essential in a one-member-one vote system, that the race has narrowed to a three-way contest, and that Paul Dewar is very well positioned to win”.

Now, some of the other campaigns may pick at the methodology and results. To them we say: Release your own internal polls!

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4 comments

Oh this is one smart move by Paul Dewar. I’ve always said he is the dark horse on this race.

A lot of people dismisses him because of his poor french (I still think that if you want to become and MP in this country it should be a requirement , mandatory.) it doesn’t matter at this point though, he is learning. He has the goods to keep the NDP momentum going, the other ones, not so much!

Mulcair is Mr. X-files, everything is a dark conspiracy too him and Topp, he might be a bright man but IMO a bad caricature of a Stephen Harper wanna to be, the others not even worth mention they aren’t really a consideration.

A canvas is not a poll and a poll is not a canvas. With a response rate of 11%, the wording of the instrument is going to be extremely important (any mention of Dewar up front would fatally screw it). And the fact that they’ve incorrectly quoted an error bounds (their 6300 respondents were not randomly selected from the population, they were self-selected) does not fill me with confidence. They are also sampling from the current membership, so they have no take on the new sign-ups, which are going to be determinative. Anyhow, taking this one with a healthy cube of salt.

I don’t think that releasing this poll was “such a great tactic”. If Dewar’s survey is a correct reflection of the NDP membership, and we apply a little arithmetic, it shows this coming down to a Mulcair vs Nash showdown.

Lets assume that everybody under 15% drops off after the first ballot (that is a total of 42.7%). Applying the second choice preference to these and assuming that the front runners hold 100% of their first ballot votes this would produce a second ballot result of: Mulcair 32.6%, Nash 25.1%, Dewar 24.1%

As the low man on the list Dewar would have to drop off for the third ballot vote.

Based on numerous reports of being samples by this poll (on Facebook, Babble and personal communications), not one person reported any such pre-seeding of the question, Mr. Ramsey. If anything, they were asking who people thought it was coming from.